Anne Frank's Family

by Mirjam Pressler

  Cornelia was a good grandmother who was proud of her grandchildren and spoiled them and did everything she could for them. She adored Robert, Otto, and Herbert, but her special favorite was Leni, her granddaughter, who, like Cornelia herself, put a high value on her appearance. A certain vanity revealed itself in Leni very early on, an almost pedantic approach to her person, and in this respect grandmother and granddaughter were very similar.

  Cornelia, too, was always perfectly dressed; even when she lay sick in bed, she took good care to put on makeup and show herself only in a fancy nightgown and lace-fringed bed jacket. Unlike the elegant beauty and sophistication of her granddaughter, though, Cornelia’s appearance had nothing provocative about it, nothing ostentatious. The difference from Leni was striking. Even as a child, Leni always headed straight at life with an open gaze and outstretched hands, while Cornelia always hung back, like someone who didn’t dare walk through a door even if it stood wide open. She had always been fearful and sad, always anticipated terrible troubles. She didn’t have the gift of happiness, a talent that no one could deny in Leni.

  Cornelia Stern née Cahn as an older woman (photo credit 1.7)

  Ten chimes of the clock on the wall pull Alice out of her thoughts. High time for bed. She wipes the pen on the blotter and screws the inkwell shut. As she stands up and starts to get ready for bed, she thinks over all the preparations for the upcoming party that still need to be taken care of. Franzi, cook and maid in one, has to wash the curtains in the living room, kitchen, and guest room tomorrow; the curtains in the bedroom don’t need it for now. She should also put clean sheets on the bed and the sofa in the guest room, so everything will be ready when Otto arrives with Margot.

  Anne, the little girl, wouldn’t be coming this time, unfortunately—that’s what Otto had written—Anne had come with him to Sils-Maria in the summer, after all, and Margot had not, so this time Anne would stay with Edith in Amsterdam. Too bad. Alice has a special affinity with the younger daughter, maybe because she looks so similar to her father. And again she curses the Nazis, who have torn her family apart. Leni and Erich are here in Switzerland with their children, Stephan and Buddy; Robert has immigrated to London with his wife, Lotti; Herbert is in Paris; and Otto lives in Amsterdam with his wife, Edith, and children, Margot and Anne. If it weren’t for the Nazis, they would all be celebrating still in Frankfurt, in her large house with enough room for everybody.

  Two days go by before Alice sits back down at her desk; on the intervening day, Leni and Erich arrived to discuss the details of the party and decide on the menu. They settled on clear vegetable soup, then a trout au bleu, which Leni especially likes, then roast veal with potatoes and red cabbage, and a plum compote with whipped cream for dessert. Erich will take care of getting some good wine, and apple juice for the children. Alice unscrews the inkwell and lays out the pen. Then she rereads straight through what she has already written before getting back to work.

  My mother felt great love & reverence, combined with great respect, for her old father, who was such a support for her. This rather strict man, who had spent his childhood in the ghetto but was not in the least pious, spoiled me in his way & I think back on him with great devotion.

  My uncle Julius, who also lived there, was kind enough to give me many cheerful hours, as you would later be able to learn for yourselves.4 From him I learned a taste for good music, and the evenings with a string quartet, which never met with my grandfather’s approval, were a rare joy for me even though I was only allowed to listen from the next room. Very few tastes or inclinations in common united me with my other uncle’s son and daughter, even though we associated with each other in the same house every day. Maybe they were jealous that I was our grandfather’s favorite more than they were. As a result, my uncle criticized my behavior a lot. There was constant friction, which bothered my mother but which I was more or less indifferent to & which didn’t bother me very much.

  Alice has forgotten the causes of these arguments and tensions; they were probably in reality so trivial that there was no point in even trying to recall them. But she can still feel the atmo sphere of the house, the complaining voice of her cousin and the reproachful, dejected reaction of her mother, who, although this became clear to her only much later, depended on the generosity of her father and her relatives. Alice’s father had not left enough to guarantee a sufficient livelihood for his family.

  My school years, up to my 15th year, were normal, no great expectations were made upon me, & since I had to leave school due to the worsening illness of my mother, my education was definitely mediocre. I caught up somewhat with private lessons that I had with my friends almost every day; I had many friends & we are still deeply devoted to each other, even today. What happy hours we spent in our “little circle”!—I could indulge my tendency to daydream all too easily while working on the many pieces of fine embroidery that were the fashion back then. These daydreams took me far away, to places that were unattainable for me, & my summons back to real life went less than smoothly frequently.

  Alice puts down the pen and gently runs her fingers down the new lace collar she recently finished and sewed onto her dark wool dress. Even today needlework is her passion and she can spend hours working on it, thinking up endless new and more complicated patterns: animals, leaves, vines. All of the table linens in her apartment were made by hand—embroidered, crocheted, embellished with homemade lace, hemstitched, with pictures and monograms in delicate white embroidery. Tablecloths and place mats, napkins, doilies, handkerchiefs, underwear, collars on coats and blouses: she made them all herself. Even some of the lace curtains.

  Needlework by Alice Frank (photo credit 1.8)

  She can sit at the window for hours at a time, moving her fingers in an even rhythm. She is happy when animals appear under her fingers—deer, sheep, swans, and fabulous beasts; flowers, branches, leaves, grapes, always another new ornament—and every time another piece is finished, she feels a great sense of satisfaction and pride that comes from within, irrespective of the judgment of others. It is a deep need she has, to produce something that is not only useful but beautiful too, almost as if she were bringing beauty into the world with the work of her hands, and thereby making the world a little bit better. She sometimes thinks that the needle for her is what the pen must be to a poet, and the thread is her ink; sometimes she compares her work to a painter’s. If she had not come into the world as a woman, she might perhaps have become a great painter. Sitting with her needlework and dreaming away while something beautiful takes shape under her fingers is her greatest pleasure. But whereas her dreams used to carry her off into unreachable distances, today they tend to carry her into what is—for now at least—a no-longer-reachable past.

  If, in later years, I was able to see the foreign lands I had always longed for with my own eyes, I have only the goodness of your father to thank for this happiness.

  I attracted his attention when I was only 15, but of course I was much too young & thoroughly inexperienced to think much about it. Still, I happily accepted every proof of his interest in me.—In any case, my thoughts & feelings were going in entirely other directions at that time, which your father well knew but which didn’t hinder him from showing me how pleased he was with me.—These events, unforgettable for me, that I mentioned above, I would rather leave unmentioned here, since they affect only me & only call up painful memories in me that should in no way concern and burden you.—

  Alice could not remember the exact occasion when she met Michael, but he knew it precisely: it was at a party at the Gymnasium Francofurtanum. He had liked her right away, he told her later, he had even danced with her, a galop, but she hadn’t especially noticed him. He chalked up her lack of interest to her youth—she was fifteen, and he was fourteen years older, almost twice her age. She was in love with a boy at the time, for the first time—an unhappy love that caused her much heartache. Later, though, when she kept seeing Michael at parties and receptions at friends’
and acquaintances’, and became more and more interested in him, and her interest turned to love, and she finally gave in and accepted his proposal, she was grateful that fate had kept her for him. She could not have found a better husband than Michael Frank. It was his love and generosity that opened up the world for her.

  I did not lack for admirers, and heaps of flowers and poems flew into the house that was run so puritanically—this caused displeasure in my family, especially since these suitors did not always come from so-called “good society” & therefore had to undergo severe criticism. I didn’t care as much about that. I was happy to accept every sign of youthful enthusiasm & the “serenades” connected to it. And how perfect the ground-floor windows were for these serenades, in that house on Hochstrasse that was otherwise so dreary!—I took my first great trip when I was 16, to see my cousin in Bern who was married by then. The great occasion was duly planned, and well-meaning warnings and recommendations were not lacking. The journey that brought us first to Mannheim, where I was invited to a magnificent concert of the then very famous Florentine Quartet in a private residence, was the overture for many lovely & enjoyable hours. I spent almost 3 months with my relatives, in complete harmony, & I met a number of very interesting people there. The old-fashioned city also made a powerful impression on me & so I returned home with many stories to tell. Of course I had also realized that much was lacking in my education, which I then attempted to improve with diligent reading & study, and to some extent I succeeded.

  Alice stands up, stretches, and shakes out her cramped writing hand. Klärchen, her favorite cousin, daughter of her uncle Bernhard Stern, was then, in 1881, newly married, and in fact to another cousin, Alfred Stern. Klara and Alfred lived in Bern. He was already a well-known historian by then, a professor at the University of Bern, and he and his young wife kept a large house. Alice still remembers that he had just finished writing a new book, The History of the English Revolution. Alice had admired Alfred, and had even envied Klärchen a little for this clever, eminent husband. The whole family, in fact, was proud of him. His father, Dr. Moritz Abraham Stern, a brother of Alice’s grandfather Emanuel Stern, had been the first unconverted Jew in Germany to become a full professor, at the University of Göttingen, after receiving a doctorate from the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.

  Alice remembers the last time she saw Alfred, two years ago, at Klärchen’s funeral. Alfred had grown old, old and withdrawn. For the first time in her experience, he lacked the warmth that had always distinguished him. It was as though with the death of his wife he had lost his soul.

  Alice quickly pushes this thought aside and returns to her happier memories of young Klara and young Alfred. The couple, who later had three daughters, Dora, Emma, and Toni, seemed to have had a good marriage—in any case, back then as fresh-faced newlyweds, they were happy. The weeks in Bern, as far as Alice can remember, were marked by laughter and good cheer, excursions and countless invitations. Still, she couldn’t help but realize that there were many topics she was unable to join the conversations about. When friends or guests mentioned books, she had often never even heard the name of the author, much less the title. Everyone she met in Bern, literally every person, seemed far more educated than she was, and she often enough turned red and had to lower her head in embarrassment when someone asked her opinion of a play or an actor or a particular staging of an opera.

  After returning home, she started to read, to fill in the gaps in her education, and she studied foreign languages more intensively too. The idea of standing there as an uneducated person and making herself the laughingstock of the group was unbearable to her. In that way it was an important and consequential trip for her, entirely aside from how much she had enjoyed her time with Klärchen.

  Alice is tired, very tired. She looks at the clock and sees that it is already after ten. She must have been so deep in thought that she didn’t hear the chimes of the clock. She will write more tomorrow, tomorrow is another day.

  The next evening, Alice turns on the light and pulls the curtains shut early, at six, because Franzi has taken the day off to visit her parents, who are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. It rained all day. Hopefully, the weather will get better soon. Alice would be happiest if there was a clean, pure white blanket of snow on the ground for her birthday, white as a tablecloth laid out for a special occasion, and a clear blue sky up above, with a cold winter sun. She smiles at this childish wish, which she has had every year for as long as she can remember but which only rarely came true. She sits down at the desk and prepares her things to keep writing.

  After my grandfather passed away in 1884, my very unhappy mother and I moved into an apartment in the Trutz.5 This change brought great transformations to my life once again; now I was thrown back on myself even more & the influence of the family on my mother was also somewhat alleviated. A close relationship with my best friend, Emma [Steger], helped very much to raise my confidence, since she was a very insecure person & clung to me as the younger and livelier friend. As a result I was able to defend myself vigorously when a marriage in England was arranged for me right after my 18th birthday. I would never have agreed to such a separation from my mother, especially since I was bound with every fiber of my being to my homeland.

  Home … Her home is Frankfurt, the city of her childhood, her youth, and her years as a wife and mother. She would never have moved away from Frankfurt of her own free will, if this wretched Austrian had not come to power there, this screechy little troublemaker who is far too frightening, though, for her to be able to laugh at him.

  And not just frightening to her! On many, many long evenings she sat with her sons Robert and Otto and discussed the situation. It had gotten more and more difficult after the bank that Michael had founded lost almost everything in the great stock market crash on October 25, 1929. Erich was the first to come to the appropriate conclusion, and he quickly found a position in Switzerland, in Basel. Two years later, Leni and little Buddy had followed. Leni left their older son, Stephan, who was already in school, with her, Stephan’s grandmother, for a time. He was to follow his mother and brother after the school year was over.

  The financial situation was beyond difficult. Otto had even had to give notice at his apartment on Marbachweg, and he and his family lived with her again, on Jordanstrasse, which had already been renamed Mertonstrasse. But without the political developments it would probably have never reached the stage of their all being forcibly separated. After the local election of March 1933, however, when the Jewish mayor, Ludwig Landmann, was forced out and the Nazi party member Friedrich Krebs became the new mayor of Frankfurt, they realized that they had no future in Germany. When Leni’s husband, who worked for Pomosin in Switzerland, arranged a position for Otto as the company representative in the Netherlands, his choice was clear: to move to Amsterdam with Edith and the girls. Robert wanted to try to open an art gallery in England, and Herbert, the problem child, wanted to stay in Paris.

  They had talked about Palestine, too, to which many Jews now wanted to immigrate, but it wasn’t an option for them. “What would we do in a country that’s just a desert? No theater, everyone speaking a foreign language, it’s so hot that you can’t walk down the street, if there even is a street,” Alice had said. And Leni added, “A country where you can’t give children any culture.”

  They all agreed. Otto said, “We don’t belong there. We Jews have lived here in Germany for almost two thousand years. We are educated, cultured, we are Jewish of course but not Orthodox. We have nothing in common with those eastern Jews, the merchants and factory workers who are largely Zionists because they have no other choice. We have absolutely nothing to do with those Eastern European rabbis. No, we could live in another European country, or America, but not in Asia.”

  For Alice it was clear from the beginning that she would follow Leni to Switzerland. A mother belongs near her daughter. And now she has been here in Basel for two years already. But this city has
never become her home—it is too provincial, the pace of life is too slow. And how can you compare the theater, the opera, the whole cultural and social life here in Basel with the one she knows from Frankfurt? Not to mention the frightful Swiss German everyone speaks here, which she can still barely understand—this guttural croaking that sounds so much more unfriendly than the much softer Frankfurt German she knows so well. Alice sighs and picks up her pen again.

  Almost 2 years followed that I would probably call the most wonderful & carefree years of my life. Love and friendship were shown to me from every side, and to some extent that is still true, & I responded with all of my heart.

  For a long time your father had not ceased to direct his attention toward me. This got back to my mother & since she saw that I was deeply fond of him too, the family consulted and took the decision to remove me for a while from this apparently dangerous environment. Even though in truth we could only be together on relatively rare occasions, & then it was usually possible only with great difficulty & with the help of trusted dear friends, nonetheless we were certain of our mutual love & had decided to bind ourselves together for life. But when it would be possible—that was far from clear to us … I took a trip to Switzerland in good spirits with my cousin Richard, felt very happy there & in no way exiled, and with my cheerfulness and good mood I put on a façade of forgetting. It was not true in the least, but was met on all sides with a sigh of relief & the goal of the trip was considered fully accomplished.

  Soon after I got back, we surprised all the relatives with the fait accompli of our engagement, without having asked anyone for advice or permission. This caused a great sensation at first, of course, & my mother had to withstand a heavy flood of accusations which she in no way felt up to. You can guess how hard it was for her to accustom herself to the thought that she would have to let me go, you who knew her well yourselves. But later she had your father to thank for many good & beautiful things.—At first it was extremely difficult for me to get used to the duties one has toward brothers and sisters, since of course I had never had any, & it was only after a considerable length of time that I learned to understand what this unconditional belonging together really means. How deeply in later years I grew attached to and loved all these dear people. You as well have had only good & beautiful experiences with all of them.